The city of Aurora will be watching, waiting to see how everything pans out for Denver and select Colorado cities where retail marijuana stores are opening this year.

The moratorium on the decision to allow retail marijuana stores in Aurora — where voters previously rejected medical dispensaries — will be in place until May.

The establishment of a three-member ad hoc committee of city council members Bob Roth, Molly Markert and Barb Cleland in May 2013 has resulted in a mountain of information and discussion on the potential implementation of retail marijuana in the city.

“It’s like starting a brand new business with no instructions,” Markert said.

One of the primary concerns of the committee, certainly something they pored over for months, was the potential locations of stores based on a capped amount of stores and geographical restrictions to sensitive properties.

A 5,000-foot buffer zone between all retail pot stores and a 500-foot buffer between schools, hospitals and religious institutions was a recommendation agreed upon by the committee in October.

The planning department then helped generate a map of hypothetical dispensary locations based on those restrictions.

By city zoning standards, all potential retail marijuana locations have to be in commercial areas like the Havana corridor and the Colfax Avenue Business District.

Business owners in those general areas have mixed feeling on their perspective retail neighbors.

“It’s not a good thing for society,” said Kazem Rezayi, owner of a sign-making business in Havana Square. “It’s good for the city because people will come from everywhere to smoke. Financially, it’s obvious what the city should do.”

Rezayi said he has nothing against marijuana users, but believes the industry will create a nagative culture in Colorado.

“We need more schools and libraries, not these kinds of stores,” he said.

The 7,800-acre Winter Valley Fire in Moffat County was 100 percent contained Tuesday as visible smoke from interior islands showed minimal creeping behavior, according to the Bureau of Land Management.